FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2997
You asked
Under the Freedom Of Information Act, I would like to ask how you determine who's vaccinated and who's unvaccinated when it comes to counting Covid deaths. The reason I ask is that everyone I know, without exception, who's recently caught Covid -19 has had at least one jab.
There was an article in the Telegraph two days ago claiming that the ONS had published a report saying that 99.51% of deaths in hospitals are unvaccinated.
Can you confirm the following:-
Have your statisticians changed recently?
Who are they?
In an open letter from doctors and experts in British Columbia (BC) (see below) they claim that the vaccinated are determined as any individual who is 14 days post receipt of a full series of WHO-approved vaccines. Is this the case in the UK?
I'm presuming that anyone who has only received one jab or within 2 weeks of their 2nd jab is deemed "unvaccinated"? Can you confirm, please?
According to point 11 below, in BC they are only requiring unvaccinated to undergo rapid antigen testing and PCR's. Is this the same for the UK?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry regarding COVID-19 vaccinations and details on ONS statisticians.
Health Analysis and Life Events Statisticians
Whilst the Health Analysis and Life Events team has expanded since the beginning of the Pandemic to undertake more analysis, the leadership of the Mortality Analysis team responsible for the weekly and monthly COVID-19 outputs has not changed.
The names of individuals are personal data and therefore withheld under Section 40(2) of FOIA.
Definition of a vaccinated and unvaccinated person
In our analysis, an unvaccinated individual is someone who has received no vaccinations.
Our analysis is based on deaths within 21 days after first dose, 21 days or more after first dose, deaths within 21 days after second dose and 21 days after second dose as this is when vaccine is deemed most effective.
In the following analysis Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021 which contains deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status that occurred between 1 January and 2 July 2021 in England. The data are for England only, as vaccinations data for Wales is not yet available to be linked to the mortality dataset and the Public Health Data Asset (PHDA) covers England only.
Antigen testing
This not a request for information held. The report in question above has not been produced by the ONS in any aspect; therefore, we would not wish to provide comment or offer explanation.
The COVID-19 infection survey (CIS) is a household survey which refers to the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes and/or other communal establishments.
For further information and an overview of all the data published across the ONS, please check our ONS COVID Insights Tool.